Mutatis Mutandis

Never let it be said that I abscond from the dictates of good etiquette :)

A link to Tabellina then - that avatar of journalistic excellence which will one day provide a viable alternative to the daily certainties of Malta's paper of record.

The Making of a Contender

Some semblance of a regular habit of posting to commence shortly. In the meantime I am occupied with the writing of a piece on Manichean politics that I hope the kind souls at Tabellina will be wise enough to publish; trying to decide which of Dell's many splendiferous laptops will soon be my own; wondering when the sword of Damocles will fall to punish my iniquitous levels of consumption, and most importantly, attempting to find suitable accomodation in Aberdeen. A presto.

Cri de coeur

(ed. note: After the small debacle that was my first post, this would qualify as one of those 'serious' entries)

There are days when I am physically and mentally unable to seize the opportunity implicit in good health and mental acuity, and today is one of them. Regardless of the glorious weather, evinced by the sunshine outside my window, I remain tied to my books, and to nagging thoughts - nothing grandiloquent, to be sure, only rage in a minor key. A perusal through the Sunday newspapers of France, Britain, the United States, Canada, Malta, even...the collected 'conventional wisdom' of six days cogitation. A question: why do we not have the steel and determination to fight and guard what is most precious, what makes the West a moral and not merely geographical expression? At the risk of acquiring chickenhawk status, (I am hardly about to join the ranks of the enlisted) have we become so comfortably ensconced on the sidelines that appeasement becomes the 'comme il faut' of informed discourse? Does it not occur to anyone that the current moment of our lives - a comparitively peaceful time of material and intellectual progress - is a historical anomaly? Why are we afraid to say that there are certain ideologies so pernicious that they must be eradicated - not solely, or primarily, by the sword, but by facing down the proponents of capitulation among us? 'All that is necessary for evil to triumph' and all that. But more of this another time. I hereby nominate every Sunday on this weblog poetry Sunday, and leave you with the words of one Guillaume Apollinaire. A glance at his lines and the concentrated self-flagellation of Robert Fisk et al. fades into insignificance. My attempt at a translation will follow anon.

Le Pont Mirabeau

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Et nos amours

Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne

La joie venait toujours après la peine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face

Tandis que sous

Le pont de nos bras passe

Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante

L'amour s'en va

Comme la vie est lente

Et comme l'Espérance est violente

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Passent les jours et passent les semaines

Ni temps passé

Ni les amours reviennent

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880 - 1918)

Part the first

Let me begin with a parry, before the thrust. Authorial responsibility for the creation of this weblog is only secondary; credit - of course it can only be credit where I am concerned - should primarily accrue to the proddings of a Maltese grand dame des lettres (hello, Sharon) of not inconsiderable charm, talent and conviction, though even these pale when juxtaposed to my incurable vanity.

The purpose of this first post - sorry, I haven't yet accepted that 'blog' is a dual-usage noun - will be none other than a public service announcement concerning the nature of your dear author, and more interestingly, perhaps, his proclivities. First, though, some words on names and titles.

This weblog's title should, in and of itself, be enough to qualify me as a member of that same liberal elite which has been deemed the bane of every straight-jawed, non-incarcerated flag-waving patriot. After all, it is supplied in a language foreign to most Maltese, with antennae the surfeit of every individual not equipped with a knowledge of Parisian architecture and late, late French Romantic poetry. Yet - for reasons unbenknownst to me - eliding the opprobrium of the 'neither borrower nor lender' crowd is not among my most immediate concerns, if only because I happen to find straight-jawed people inveterately dull and, well, as an older, wiser soul once put it, 'takes one to know one.' To demystify it [the title] completely, let me also admit that yes, I am aware of the poem by Apollinaire, of the bridge in Paris that is its inspiration, as well as the French revoluntionary of the same name. Why Mirabeau? Cherchez le femme, allied to the fact that at the age of twenty-six I have two trips to Paris that will remain seared into my memory for some time.

The more perspicacious amongst you will quickly realise that the persona of Troilus has been substituted by 'the Jacobin' - which, to anyone with an inclination as to my political bearings would seem to denote a hint of schizophrenia. To allay any fears I must explain that historical figures - especially those from the early Communist Left - have always captured my sympathy. Their aims - in particular, the desire for liberty and its cousin, equality before the law, still remain part of the understanding of what an inclusionary politics should include. (My decision to subsume French Jacobins under the Early Communist banner could, upon request, be the subject of another post) The name should also serve to inoculate me against some charges of fascist hysteria whenever I propogate ideas which are inimical to the European Left in its contemporary incarnation.

In the main, my chosen subjects shall be found from amongst the politics-sex-poetry triad. Yes, really. Politics (international, with the occasional Maltese dollop) certainly. Sex (that is, the fairer) unavoidably. Poetry because...it must be worth something as an art if its mastery escaped even Nabokov. Mercifully for readers my contributions in this vein shall be limited to the odd suggestion.

Enfin, Miranda. Or, more appositely, Miranda. Miranda v. Arizona appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1966. The gist of the Supreme Court's ruling involved the determination that if and when arrested individuals were not informed of their rights prior to interrogation, any evidence that the police gathered during their communication with the arrested - in the case of Miranda, a confession - could not be used during trial. For the purposes of this and every subsequent entry, then, the following will be deemed to serve as your warning: I make no guarantees as to the quality or quantity of the words to follow, the coherence of the thought process buffering them, or my membership in any category of decent-hearted folk.

Topics to follow in the next few days: vestiges of my romantic past, and profligacy in that regard; the girdings of my admiration for the leader of the "free" world - with a challenge to those who would use those quotation marks ironically, and ("I am shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on here!") the moral perfidy presented by many distingushed members of the Guardian's opinion page.